The head coach of the men's lacrosse team at Rutgers has been suspended over allegations of verbal abuse, the university said. 

Rutgers said the coach would be suspended with pay pending the outcome of an investigation to be conducted by the Rutgers University Police Department.    

The suspension comes two weeks after Rutgers fired men's basketball head coach Mike Rice after video surfaced showing him shoving and throwing balls at players during practices while using gay slurs.

Rutgers' athletics director, Tim Pernetti, who fined Rice and ordered he take anger management classes after seeing the video months earlier, was forced to step down in the wake of the controversy that followed. 

Escalating backlash also prompted calls for the resignation of Rutgers President Robert Barchi, who had known about the Rice videos since November but said he never watched them. At the time, he said, he supported Pernetti's disciplinary choices, but after seeing the videos recently, said they represented a pervasive culture of abuse and that Rice should have been fired immediately.

Barchi vowed earlier this month that Rutgers would review all sports practice video to see if any coach engaged in inappropriate behavior.

In announcing the lacrosse coach's suspension Friday, Barchi said in a statement that words or actions inconsistent with university values would not be tolerated. 

“Our student athletes, as all members of the Rutgers community, should know that our university is committed to promoting an atmosphere of respect and dignity,“ Barchi said. “As I stressed earlier, we will be looking closely at all intercollegiate athletics at Rutgers going forward. If we find problems, we will address them.”

The story of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev contains many elements of a classic immigrant experience: driven from a troubled corner of the world, finding refuge in the United States, and chasing dreams similar to those that have motivated generations of newly minted Americans.

Only this story now includes the planting of bombs that tore apart their adopted home, authorities say.

Until Monday's bombing of the Boston Marathon, the Tsarnaev brothers were largely assumed to have embraced American life. Now they are suspected of planting the two improvised explosives that killed three and injured dozens in one of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil.

"It's hard to fathom that someone that I knew, saw every day, would be capable of something like this," said Idia Irele, who attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

For complete coverage, visit NBC News

“He was a very respectful young man,” said John Curran, a boxing coach who helped Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s win a 2009 New England Golden Gloves title. “That’s what is so mind blowing about this whole situation.”

They spoke, as many bewildered acquaintances did, in the hours after the brothers were named as suspects, triggering a massive police manhunt that culminated early Friday with a deadly shootout. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died with an improvised explosive device strapped to his chest after leading police on a wild car chase and one police officer was left dead. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, escaped, and remained on the run.

By dawn the streets of Boston and its suburbs were put on lockdown with residents told to remain at home, as throngs of police officers in battle gear combed the usually busy, but now tense and quiet,  neighborhoods. Transit was closed down and even the Boston Red Sox game was canceled as the hunt dragged into evening.

Gradually, the brothers' story emerged, pieced together by authorities, relatives and friends.

Asylum from war

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was an outspoken athlete who spoke three languages, played the piano, studied engineering, was a devout Muslim and aspired to represent the United States at the Olympics.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a introspective but popular star of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School wrestling team who won a city-sponsored scholarship to attend college.

The brothers were part of a family refugees who fled the war-torn Chechnya region of Russia and immigrated to America a decade ago. Located in the North Caucasus region of Russia, Chechnya has been riven by wars between separatist militants and the Russian government. Chechen rebels have been involved with terrorist attacks in Russia, but not, to anyone’s knowledge, in the West.

Their family—two parents, sisters and two brothers—fled the region and in 2003 ended up in America.

“They immigrated and received asylum,” Ruslan Tsarni, the brothers’ uncle, told reporters outside his home in suburban Maryland.

A seemingly nice kid

The brothers grew up in Cambridge, just outside Boston. 

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a little withdrawn but nice to those who got to know him.

“He was a quiet and passive guy, well liked,” Ash Raful, a wrestling teammate who at one point looked up to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, told the Today show.

He was also an extremely hard worker who made it to the state wrestling playoffs despite having only a couple years' experience with the sport, Ash said.

Deana Beaulieu said she'd known Dzhokhar Tsarnaev since the seventh grade. She, too, remembered him as a quiet boy who did little more than go to school and come home.

"You always have to be worried about the quiet ones I guess," Beaulieu said.

Robin Young, a Boston-area journalist whose nephew was friends with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, described him as a "light, airy, beautiful, curly-haired kid" who'd attended the prom and won an academic scholarship.

"No one can believe that it's this young man," Young told Today.

In 2011, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was granted a $2,500 scholarship from the City of Cambridge to continue his studies in college, the Boston Globe reported. He eventually enrolled at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

He became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11, 2012, according to documents obtained by NBC News.

Another former classmate, Sierra Schwartz, told Today that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “was very normal."

“This was an incredible shock to everyone," Schwartz said.

On a Russian social media site, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev identified his religion as Islam and his priorities as career and money, according to NBC News.

The suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in an interview from Russia with The Associated Press that his surviving son was "a true angel."

"Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here," the father said.

He added: "They were set up, they were set up! I saw it on television; they killed my older son Tamerlan."

Some of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's acquaintances said they didn't know until Friday that he had an older brother.

Olympic dreams

Tamerlan Tsarnaev became a legal permanent resident in 2007, officials said. He spent a couple years studying at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston while pursuing his dream of a boxing career. He last took classes there from 2006 to 2008, school officials told the Associated Press.

He was the subject of a photographic profile in 2010 in a Boston University student magazine in which he said he’d taken time off from engineering studies to focus on the Golden Glove competition. He described himself as a devout Muslim who didn’t smoke or drink. “I don’t have a single American friend,” he was quoted as saying. “I don’t understand them.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev said he hoped to use boxing as a path to citizenship, by way of qualifying for the Olympics.

His coach, John Curran, who met him in 2008, described Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a gifted athlete who often performed complicated gymnastic moves—tumbles, handstands—in the gym. He spoke three languages and played the piano.

Curran said that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sometimes accompanied his older brother to the boxing gym, but did not fight. He seemed introverted, especially in comparison to his older brother's outgoing nature.

"He was like a puppy dog following his older brother," Curran said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev ended up winning a New England Golden Gloves title, Curran said. They lost touch in 2010.

Travel to Russia questioned

Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Russia last year, staying six months before returning in July 2012, according to travel records obtained by NBC 4 New York.

That travel is now of interest to investigators, who want to know if he received any terror training while he was overseas, NBC 4 New York reported.

Among the many questions they are trying to answer is whether the brothers acted alone or were part of a larger conspiracy or had connections to foreign militants.

NBC News reported that counter terrorism officials were examining possible links with the Islamic Jihad Union of central Asia.

A family's shame

Ruslan Tsarni, the brothers’ uncle, grew visibly angry when he was asked about what may have motivated them to commit such a horrific crime.

Tsarni said he hasn't seen his nephews in years, and could only speculate.

“Being losers,” he said. “Not being able to settle themselves. Hating everyone who did.”

Tsarni went on to say that had brought shame on their family and the Chechen people.

And he urged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to come out of hiding and give up.

"Dzhokhar! If you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured and from those who left.”

Cathy Rainone, WNBC's Brynn Gingras and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

After spending days in the Intensive Care Unit at Boston Children's Hospital, the Bay Area family of an 11-year-old boy injured in the Boston Marathon bombing had some good news to cheer about Thursday.

Aaron Hern, 11, is doing much better medically, and he had a special visitor surprise him in his hospital room.

First Lady Michelle Obama was at Aaron's bedside Thursday afternoon, to the thrill of his family.

Obama accompanied her husband to Boston to take part in a church service Thursday morning. The couple then split up in the afternoon and paid visits to several hospitals in the city.  The First Lady visited Boston Children's Hospital where she met with the Herns.

Aaron's doctors said he is doing much better, three days after twin explosions ripped through the street near the Boston Marathon finish line. Surgeons were able to close the largest shrapnel wound on his leg during a second operation on Wednesday, according to the family.

His mother's Facebook post said this was a "huge step forward."

Aaron's mother's posted the following post to Facebook:

"Hi everyone! Busy and exciting morning. Aaron is almost completely "unhooked" from everything. Off oxygen, catheter, neck brace, etc. all that's left is pain medicine and fluids. Huge step forward. He may be out of the ICU as early as tomorrow. Physical therapy folks came in and started talking about what we have to do there. For now he will start out slow with just sitting up and turning in bed. Still not sure exactly how long we'll be here but sounding shorter than longer!"

The Herns said the 11-year-old boy might even be able to leave the ICU on Friday.

Aaron (pictured below) was with his father, Alan, his sister, Abby, and two family friends cheering on his mother , Katherine, as she finished the marathon when the boy was hit by shrapnel from the second bomb during Monday's twin blasts.

His father said he was just 6 feet away from the device.

Doctors at Boston Children's Hospital have said Aaron likely would be in the hospital for seven to 10 days.

Aaron turns 12 on May 1 and his family hopes to be back home in the Bay Area by then.

The Hern family is well known in Martinez.

Patriarch Alan Hern is the football coach at Alhambra High School. His wife Katherine Hern is a member of the Kiwanis club and active fundraiser in the community.

Aaron's classmates at Martinez Junior High School spent time this week making get-well cards, and the school  is collecting money to help the family pay for an unplanned extended stay in Boston while Aaron recovers.

Community members in Martinez are also helping in any way they can.

Roxanne Cole, the owner of restaurant and wine bar Roxx on Main, welcomed diners to the business for a fundraiser for the family during the lunch and dinner hours on Tuesday.

Employees at the restaurant worked for  free on Tuesday, and other local businesses, including Chairs for Affairs, donated supplies, Cole said.

"If you know anything about Martinez, we're a very tight-knit  community, and I wanted to do something to help," she said.

Cole said the event netted $4,500, with all proceeds going to help  cover the family's transportation and housing expenses.

Cole said she would continue to hold the same fundraiser each  Tuesday until the Hern family returns home.

The public will have more chances to dine and donate to the Herns  at a fundraiser at Mountain Mike's Pizza at 1160 Arnold Drive in Martinez  today from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The fundraiser will continue every day through  Sunday.

Sunday through Wednesday, customers at Kinder's Meats and BBQ  throughout Contra Costa County can donate 15 percent of each purchase to the  Hern family.

As the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev continued on Friday afternoon, Boston residents ordered to stay indoors, began sharing photos of the city’s empty streets on social media.

Authorities were hunting door-to-door for the 19-year-old college student after his older brother and alleged accomplice was killed in a firefight overnight.

The city was completely deserted as mass transit was halted in Boston and police warned close to 1 million people in the city and some of its suburbs to hunker down in their homes and keep their doors locked to anyone but law-enforcement officers. 

“It is important that folks remain indoors,” Gov. Deval Patrick said at a press conference on Friday. “Keep the doors locked and [do not] open the door unless there is a uniformed, identified law enforcement officer on the other side of it requesting to come inside.”

Businesses were also advised not to open. In Boston’s Seaport district, office towers sat almost empty, according to The Boston Globe.

Bus service was suspended and the Boston subway system remained shut down, while taxi service has been partially restored. Amtrak rail service to Boston was suspended.

City and town halls as well as courthouses were closed. Public works canceled trash pickup, keeping garbage trucks off streets.

The Red Sox and the Bruins' games scheduled for Friday night were postponed.

Take a look at images of Boston on lockdown.

Denis Hayes dropped out of Harvard's Kennedy School in 1970 to help organize the first Earth Day—an event that mobilized more than 20 million Americans and helped pave the way for the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.

That day, some planted trees and cleaned up parks as a rowdier set took to the streets to demand reform from corporations they accused of recklessly harming the planet. In Minneapolis, protestors crashed a General Electric stockholders’ meeting; others in Washington delivered dead, oil-soaked ducks to the steps of the Department of the Interior. Congress adjourned for the day as lawmakers from both parties capitalized on what NBC News characterized then as the “most popular and least risky election issue” of the time. 

Over the next two decades, Earth Day continued to evolve. In 1990, Hayes, who had been pursuing a host of other enviornmental endeavors, returned to push it internationally. Two years later he was tapped to lead the Bullitt Foundation, a Seattle-based environmental company that is slated to formally open one of the greenest corporate buildings on the planet this Earth Day.

Leading up to the anniversary of one of the hallmarks of his career, Hayes looks back at the birth of popular environmentalism, the progress of the movement, and the challenges of addressing a threat that “dwarfs earlier perils”: climate change.

Here are his thoughts on key environmental issues, in his own words:

On the success of the first Earth Day:
At the time, the vast majority of people, 95 percent of Americans, could not have given you a coherent explanation of what the word "environment" meant. We were really taking this huge array of issues that did have constituencies—people worried about DDT, people worried about endangered species or the American military dropping Agent Orange on Vietnam—and we lumped them all together under a new banner.

We were hoping it would be successful and had no expectation that it would be three or four times larger than the largest anti-war rally back then.

Why climate change is a tougher adversary than the environmental villains of the 1970s:
The most important thing is visibility. When the first Earth Day came in 1970, for much of the year if you walked around Los Angeles it was like walking around Beijing today—the air pollution was so thick you could almost cut it with a knife. Pollution was a visible thing that you could taste and you could smell and was linked to rivers catching on fire and very serious warnings that unless we reverse course, the Great Lakes would become biologically sterile. So this visible tangible kind of thing was something  that you could mobilize people around much more easily than you can an invisible gas that has no smell, has no taste.

I mean heavens—every time we breathe, we emit carbon dioxide. It’s hard to cast it as a villain the way you could with the components of smog, for example. So it's just a much more nuanced issue and yet with incredible capacity to change the world into a type of environment that has not existed since the evolution of Homo sapiens. That’s a tough issue.

On the public's interest in environmental reform:
I think that [the public has] the the same level of concern now for things that immediately affect themselves and their families, their neighborhoods and their nation that are easily identified, which is what we were able to capitalize on back then. But with regard to the climate issue, it is much more difficult to get people to get their arms around intellectually and it’s much more difficult to come up with a solution or series of solutions in the current anti-tax, anti-regulatory environment.  

Remember, in 1970 we had a Republican president who was okay with signing a Clean Air Act and creating an Environmental Protection Agency, and that has just dramatically changed. Richard Nixon, for all of his conservatism, was arguably more progressive than the majority of the current democratic members of congress.

On getting climate change legislation passed after President Obama's first and only attempt—the American Clear Energy and Security Act—was squashed by Congress in 2009:
The climate legislation that was proposed was 1,400 pages long, breathtakingly complicated, laced with tons of loopholes that were put in there by various special interests in order to get a vote here and there and it was based on a cap-and-trade premise that had already pretty much failed when applied in Europe. So that’s kind of a tough thing to mobilize a vast constituency around.

If we had a solution that was two pages long—I'll be realistic, twenty pages long— that was very clear, that had provisions in it that people can comprehend, had a straight-forward solution to a problem and we did not have the relentless drumbeat of Fox News and the anti-science folks who manage to command the airwaves and the digital sphere today, there is no question in my mind that two-thirds or three quarters of the American public that cares about this issue and wants to get it solved could be mobilized.

The movement has not put together the right kinds of vehicles … we’re beginning to see some of that, the 350.org organization—but we need to get vastly more of that to people with the large constituencies. 

On the legacy of Earth Day:
[Earth Day has] been hugely vibrant in that sense all the way through the United States, something on the order of 90,000 schools still annually participate in it. Then in 1990 we took it internationally and is now out there in more than 170 counties and serves each year as what I genuinely believe is the largest secular holiday in the world.

If you were in the human rights field or the anti-war field I think you would love to have an instrument like Earth Day that every year gives people pause—a chance to reflect upon the values that you’re promoting.

The events in Boston overnight Thursday into Friday morning have been fast-moving and confusing at times.

Here's where things stood on Friday afternoon:

• The FBI released photos and videos Thursday afternoon of two men they believed to be responsible for the bombing at Monday's Boston Marathon, which left three dead and injured more than 170.
• Shortly after 10 p.m., police received reports of a robbery at a 7-Eleven near the campus of MIT. Massachusetts State Police said Friday afternoon that the bombing suspects were not believed to have committed the robbery.
• Soon came reports of gunshots on the MIT campus, where campus police office Sean Collier, 26, of Somerville, Mass., was found dead in his cruiser with multiple gunshot wounds.
• About an hour later, two men hijacked a Mercedes SUV in Cambridge, holding the driver hostage for half an hour, while they visited three ATMs, making one successful withdrawal of $800, before releasing him. The victim says his assailants told him they had killed a campus police officer and claimed responsibility for the marathon bombings.
• Police spotted the stolen SUV and began a car chase during which the suspects began throwing explosives out a car window and exchanging gunfire. During the shootout, one of the men now identified as bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed, and a Boston transit officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was seriously injured.
 A second suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, apparently got away.
• Tamerlan was born in Russia and had been an accounting student at Bunker Hill Community College. A talented amateur boxer, he once harbored dreams of fighting on the U.S. Olympic team, a quest chronicled in a photo essay called "Will Box for Passport."
• His brother Dzhokar was born in Kyrgyzstan before moving to America as a youth. He graduated from Cambridge Rindge & Latin, one of the area's better public high schools, and two years ago was awarded a $2,500 scholarship for college. He became a naturalized citizen on Sept. 11, 2012. Friends recall him as "nice," "funny" and "light," while his father described him as a "true angel."
• Anzor Tsarnaev, the suspects' father, said via telephone from his home in Makhachkala, Russia, that he spoke with his sons earlier in the week, when they told him, "Everything is good, Daddy." He has asked his son to "surrender peacefully," but he also said that his boys "were set up" and warned that if authorities "killed (Dzhokar), then all hell would break loose."
• Meanwhile, in Cambridge, Mass., two people were taken into custody at the house where the suspects grew up. The people were not described as suspects or as being under arrest.
• Some 1 million residents throughout the metropolitan region have been asked to stay inside, as police have swarmed Watertown, Mass., with military-style vehicles and established a no-fly zone overhead.
• The Boston subway system, aka the "T," remains shut down, while taxi service has been partiality restored. The Boston Bruins and the Boston Red Sox postponed tonight's games.

NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders was told to get on the ground while reporting from the scene of the Boston bombings suspect manhunt early Friday.

Complete Coverage: Terror in Boston

Sanders had been updating Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie on police activity in Watertown, Mass.

He and his photojournalist had been jogging alongside officers when he was told to take cover.

When he appeared on camera again, he was on the ground with the phone to his ear.

“Incredibly tense when an officer is telling you to get on the ground,” Sanders explained.

Guthrie quickly told Sanders to do what officers directed and told him to stay safe.

Sanders described a scene of many official cars and snipers in position when he and other members of the media were pushed back from the scene.

“He just told us if we knew what was going on, we would be standing here right now so I’m going to get behind the car and listen to what he has to say,” Sanders said.

Watch video on CNBC

"Savannah I think I'm going to just move positions and take his advice," he told the Today Show anchor.

Earlier in the week, Sanders was seen surrounded by golden retrievers as part of his assignment on comfort dogs visiting the injured from the marathon bombings.   

What do rodeos, avocados and beer all have in common? They’re each the focus of some really exciting events in San Diego this weekend.

So what are you waiting for? Start planning your days off with our roundup.

Friday, April 19

Lakeside Rodeo
7:30 p.m. at 12584 Mapleview St.
Get in touch with your country roots at the annual Lakeside Rodeo in East County. Tickets start at $10 for adults, $5 for kids.

Pac-Arts Spring Showcase
Various times, 7510 Hazard Center Dr.
Award-winning directs and actors will participate in the third annual film showcase, complete with movies from across the globe. Ticket prices vary.

Saturday, April 20

Taste of Hillcrest
noon to 4 p.m. at Fifth and Robinson Avenues
Sample more than 50 restaurants in this fun neighborhood during its annual taste event. Shopping specials will also be offered at local businesses. Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 day-of.

Chicano Park Day
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Chicano Park
Barrio Logan's colorful park, which recently became a historical landmark, is celebrating its 43rd birthday. The free event has traditional music and dance, with a presentation of classic lowrider cars.

Oceanside Days of Art
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Downtown Oceanside
This free family art festival features more than 120 local artists selling jewelry, paintings and sculptures.

CityBeat Festival of Beers
2-5:30 p.m. at 2223 El Cajon Blvd.
Local brewers will be pouring some of their best brews in North Park this weekend. Tickets for unlimited samples are $40.

Sunday, April 21

MS Walk
7 a.m. at LEGOLAND
Proceeds from this 1.5 mile walk benefit support life-changing programs and cutting-edge research for multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects thousands of people across the country. 

Earth Day Fair
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Balboa Park
Thousands of people are expected to attend the 24th Annual Earth Day Fair at Balboa Park. It’s free – so bring as many people as you want.

Fallbrook Avocado Festival
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Downtown Fallbrook
Try an avocado milkshake or gnosh on some fresh made guacamole at this green and free event. Entertainment includes live bands and a children’s play area.

What are you looking forward to this weekend? Tell us in the comments below.

FBI investigators and other law enforcement officers are searching the West New York, N.J. home of a woman identified as a sister of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. 

The FBI has removed a computer from the woman's home inside a three-story brick building on Buchanan Place. Police have cordoned off the place. 

Before authorities swarmed the home at 11 a.m., the woman, who lives with her husband and two young children, told reporters from behind her apartment door she was "hurt for everyone that's been hurt." 

"I'm sorry for the families that lost their loved ones, the same way I lost my loved ones," she said.

"I'm not OK, just like everybody else is not OK," she said. "No one is OK. It's very shocking."

The woman said her older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old suspect killed during the chase overnight in the Boston area, was a "great person, a kind and loving man." She described her younger brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was still being sought in the Boston area, as "an amazing child."

"They are smart," she said. "My older brother was smart. I have no idea what's gotten into them." 

She said she was sure her father was "very hurt." 

The father, Anzor Tsarnaev, spoke with the Associated Press by telephone in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan Friday. He said his younger son was "an intelligent boy" who was studying medicine.

He ended the call angrily, saying, "Leave me alone, my son's been killed." 

The sister said she had not seen her brothers in years. Her husband said he never met the two men in the year and a half he has been with her. 

Michael Indri, the police director of West New York, said the woman was cooperating with authorities, according to The Star-Ledger. 

A neighbor who lives on the third floor above the woman saw some of the police activity inside the building and overheard some of the conversation from the apartment. 

"Nothing crazy going on, cops going in and out," Jose Roca told NBC 4 New York. 

Roca said the couple, whom he described as "normal people," was being cooperative with police.

Elsewhere Friday, the suspects' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, told reporters from outside his home in Montgomery Village, Md., "We're ashamed. They're children of my brother, who had little influence on them."

"He put a shame on our surname's family. He put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity." 

Stolen items ranging from iPads to Frank Sinatra albums are ready for their owners to come and pick them up officials said Thursday.

San Diegans who have filed a police report regarding stolen goods were invited to the Fallbrook Sheriff’s Substation on Alvarado Street to see the display of items recovered by postal investigators and San Diego County sheriff’s deputies.

Erik Watte, 26, and Henry Zermeno, 22, were arrested along with a 17-year-old male in connection with a series of burglaries in the North County and Riverside County four months ago.

The juvenile suspect was in a stolen vehicle at the time of his arrest officials said. He was booked into Juvenile Hall on suspicion of auto theft, conspiracy and residential burglary.

Watte and Zermeno were booked into Vista Jail on possession of stolen property, burglary and narcotics-related charges.

In the process of the investigation, deputies were led to a home on Huffstater Road in Rainbow and a storage unit in Temecula where they recovered a large amount of stolen property.

Among the items are a LA County sheriff’s badge, coins, computers, jewelry, an air gun and a set of dishes. There are even collectible Peanuts and Star Wars cards. See Images

“We’re hoping that people who see this, will see their property and give us a call,” said Jan Caldwell, SDSO spokesperson.

If you don’t have a chance to go to Fallbrook, Caldwell said the department would post images of the stolen items online.

Officials believe the items were taken from residents in Temecula, Murrieta and other areas of Riverside County.

Detectives would also like to hear from people who have been victims of mail theft recently.

“If you’re missing mail or are expecting mail you don’t receive to contact the Postal Inspection Service,” said U.S. Postal Inspector Ricky Vida.

Residents can also report stolen property by calling (760) 451‐3109.

A reserve deputy sheriff of Imperial County has been charged with smuggling illegal immigrants in the trunk of her car as she drove through a checkpoint wearing her uniform, the office of U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy confirmed.

El Centro, Calif., resident and three-year reserve deputy sheriff Elizabeth Hernandez, 23, and Edna Calderon, 22, were charged on Thursday with transportation of illegal aliens and aiding and abetting.

According to court documents, Hernandez and Calderon allegedly picked up three illegal aliens at a fast food restaurant in Calexico, Calif., on Wednesday.

Border Patrol agents in the area became suspicious of their vehicle and began following at a distance.

Agents watched as Calderon drove the suspected illegal aliens to Hernandez’s home. Court documents allege that Hernandez then instructed the three people to hide in the trunk of her car.

The women, driving separate cars, then cleared a checkpoint with Hernandez wearing her deputy sheriff uniform and department-issued firearm. Court records say Hernandez wore her uniform because she expected to be waved through the Highway 86 checkpoint by Border Patrol agents.

After crossing the checkpoint, investigators say Hernandez and Calderon reunited at a nearby gas station where they transferred two of the three illegal aliens into Calderon’s car. The women were still unknowingly under Border Patrol surveillance.

As Hernandez left the gas station, agents stopped her car and Calderon’s vehicle and discovered the three illegal aliens inside the cars. Hernandez and Calderon were arrested.

The defendants were arraigned and charged in court on Thursday. They’re scheduled to appear in court again on Apr. 23 for a detention hearing and on May 2 for a preliminary hearing.

Both Hernandez and Calderon face a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

California's unemployment rate dropped in March to 9.4 percent as job growth in the state continued to outpace the nation, figures released Friday show.

The rate represented a drop from 9.6 percent in February and from 10.7 percent during the same period a year ago. California has added 286,000 jobs in the past 12 months.

The decrease in March put California's unemployment rate at the lowest level since December 2008, a year after the recession began.

However, California still has the third-highest jobless rate in the country. The state is tied with Mississippi, and ranks behind Nevada, at 9.7 percent, and Illinois, at 9.5 percent.

The national unemployment rate decreased in March to 7.6 percent.

California added 25,500 jobs in March, with the largest gains in professional and business services, which added 15,800 jobs, and information-based companies, with 11,700 positions.

Construction, financial activities, educational and health services, hospitality and government also added jobs, according to the preliminary figures released by the state's Employment Development Department.

Trade, transportation and utilities posted the largest decreases, cutting a total of 8,400 positions. Mining, logging, manufacturing and other services also reported fewer jobs.

Colusa County, a farming region north of Sacramento, had the state's highest unemployment rate in March at 23.9 percent. Marin County was the lowest at 5.2 percent.

California continues to add jobs faster than the national rate, wrote Stephen Levy, senior economist at the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

Statewide, the number of jobs has risen by 2 percent during the past 12 months, compared to 1.4 percent nationally. Levy said strong gains were made in Southern California, particularly in the movie industry.

"The California recovery remains led by coastal regions with the southern part of the state now joining the (San Francisco) Bay area in the recovery,'' he wrote.

A woman was critically injured in a rollover crash in Santee Friday, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said.

Deputies say the rollover crash happened around 11:20 a.m. at the intersection of Mast Boulevard and Carlton Hills Boulevard.

According to investigators, a woman driving a red minivan eastbound on Mast Boulevard ran a red light at the intersection, colliding into a vehicle that was traveling southbound on Carlton Hills Boulevard.

The driver of the red minivan rolled her vehicle and sustained major injuries in the crash. Paramedics performed CPR on her at the scene and she was transported to Sharp Memorial Hospital.

She was admitted into the ICU in critical condition, the sheriff’s department said. Her current condition is unknown.

The driver of the other car wasn’t injured. The collision remains under investigation.
 

U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) crews rescued two recreational sailors near Silver Strand State Beach on Friday afternoon after their sailboat capsized.

According to USCG officials, the rescue happened around 2:30 p.m. about two miles west of Silver Strand.

The Coast Guard Cutter Waesche crew was in the area when they spotted the 12-foot capsized vessel with one sailor in the hull and the other clinging to the side.

The cutter, which is based out of Alameda, Calif., launched their small boat and rescued the two sailors from the water, officials said.

The sailors were not injured.

After that, a response boat crew from the Coast Guard Station San Diego arrived on scene and transferred both sailors onto their vessel. The sailors were taken back safely to Shelter Island. USCG crews were also able to tow the sailors’ capsized boat back to shore, officials said.